Review: ‘Images’

Robert Altman made this interior drama about a woman going through hallucination and nearing madness in Ireland. Delving into effects of permissiveness on a hidebound, repressed nature, it also shows a probing insight into mental disorder.

Robert Altman made this interior drama about a woman going through hallucination and nearing madness in Ireland. Delving into effects of permissiveness on a hidebound, repressed nature, it also shows a probing insight into mental disorder.

Susannah York, writing a fairy tale for children about mysterious woods and a unicorn that acts as a counterpoint to her real life losing of touch with reality, imagines phone calls saying her husband is with another woman and when they go to their country house for the weekend two men in her life intrude as imaginary, or, in one case, real.

York has the intensity and innocence marked by strain as well as sensual underpinnings, and brings off the final denouement with restraint and potency.